FLOTUS

The stalwart and defiantly odd Nashville band Lambchop's latest reinvention finds them embracing a Vocoder-drenched, largely electronic sound. It is as lush and gorgeous as any of their past work.

Over the course of Lambchop’s two decade-plus career, they have been remarkably consistent. Even with their various lineup shifts, there have never been any tumultuous breakups, no big reunions, no major controversies. Any of their 12 studio releases could reasonably be your favorite. But while each of their albums sound unmistakably like Lambchop, no two of them sound quite alike; from the bouncy alt-country of Thriller, to the stark lounge folk of Is a Woman, through the sweetly orchestrated ballads of their last album, 2012’s excellent Mr. M. As a frontman, Kurt Wagner–with his inimitable baritone, like an agoraphobic Bill Callahan–has also shifted and stretched in his own quiet way. Sometimes he’ll greet you with a pre-coffee grumble; other times, he’s singing in the shower with a wispy falsetto. Like any good leading man, Wagner redefines himself for the role he’s playing, but he never lets you forget that he’s in control.

So while FLOTUS, the band’s Vocoder-drenched, largely electronic new album, might initially feel like a shock, the reinvention is not entirely unprecedented. Last year saw the release of The Diet, an album by Lambchop side project HeCTA– featuring Wagner, as well as drummer Scott Martin and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Norris– that found Wagner singing his characteristic melodies over dance beats and au-courant synths (“You shouldn’t have to change a thing, except your mind,” he sang in the album’s highlight). Those ideas come into full bloom throughout the nearly-70 minute FLOTUS, though it’s less tentative and more seamless, with even Wagner’s vocals sounding like an instrument in the mix (this is not merely Lambchopped and Screwed). Like Bon Iver on 22, A Million, Lambchop exist here as a modern Americana act refusing their genre’s assumed aesthetics. But unlike the post-Yeezus cacophony of 22, A Million, FLOTUS is as lush and gorgeous as any of Lambchop’s past work, sometimes floating by with the luxurious chill of hotel lobby music, but never losing its sense of direction.

With the majority of the album eschewing traditional song structure, the most immediate way to listen to FLOTUS is as a bridge between its twin epics: the opening “In Care of 8675309” and its closer, “The Hustle.” In Lambchop’s lineage of long, slow-burning album openers, “8675309” is their longest and their slowest-burning. It also serves as a smooth gateway into the band’s new sound, with Wagner’s heavily effected vocals–like the church organ setting on a cheap keyboard with the speakers muffled–rising from tentative opening notes to full-blown crooning by the end, accompanying one of the album’s best melodies. Wagner has cited both Kendrick Lamar and Shabazz Palaces as inspirations for his new direction, but a more fitting reference here might be Future, whose use of Auto-Tune is less ornamental and more foundational to his very cadence and word choice. As such, “8675309” is not merely a great Lambchop song with a weird vocal effect; it’s a great Lambchop song because of the weird vocal effect.

“The Hustle,” on the other hand, arrives at the end of the record devoid of any vocal effects. Hearing Wagner’s untreated voice by that point makes it sound even more powerful and vulnerable. “I don’t want to leave you ever,” he opens, his voice warbling and reverberating all on its own, “And that’s a long, long time.” Over the course of its jazzy, stuttering 18 minutes, the song slides between movements, like Destroyer’s similar tour-de-force “Bay of Pigs,” before closing with the faint sound of piano. “It was raining like a movie/And it was hard to look away,” Wagner sings, a fitting metaphor for how captivating and uncanny but wholly natural the song feels.

While none of the other tracks on the album are as immediate as “8675309” or as stunning as “The Hustle,” they each reveal their charms on repeated listens. The ones that focus on simple, repeated phrases–like “You are very remarkable” in “NIV” or “Take it on the chin” in “Directions to the Can”–become catchy in an effortless way. The less vocal-focused songs function as opportunities to appreciate the other members of the band. Tony Crow’s piano in “Howe” is as lyrical as any of Wagner’s appearances, and Matt Swanson’s bass in “Old Masters” slithers with soulful charisma. Every part of the record speaks to the greater whole, from the album cover (a close-up shot of Wagner’s wife, Mary Mancini, the Chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party posing with Obama), to the title: both an acronym for “First Lady of the US” and, according to the liner notes, “For Love Often Turns Us Still,” a meditation on how simple things still render us speechless. “Given enough time, I can pretty much draw a correlation between any separate objects,” Wagner has said. The disparate pieces of this album play to that strength, unfolding like a long riddle.

It’s to the band’s credit that FLOTUS exceeds its novelty. In a year when Springsteen, Bowie, and the creator of a hit Broadway musical have all cited Kendrick Lamar’s music as an inspiration, FLOTUS does not come entirely out of left field; it’s a solid, satisfying listen, devoid of context. Wagner’s lyrics are as cutting as ever (“See the flowers wilt/From the government they built/As the hammers wail/On a ship that hasn’t sailed”) and the band already sounds comfortable with their new sound, settling into a weightless groove that make you feel as if they’ve played this way forever. It’s one of Lambchop’s greatest strengths, that even when they’re overtly experimenting, they wear it as naturally as the garish pearls that have adorned their stage attire. “There’s that old saying about an artist having only one or two good ideas in his life and is doomed to repeat them,” Wagner recently said in an interview. “I reject that notion. I think I have maybe five.” What’s clear after listening to FLOTUS, is that he’s only getting started.